


He Of Many Must Rule Alone

by lizzieboolizard



Series: He Of Many Must Rule Alone [1]
Category: Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2015-03-17
Packaged: 2018-03-18 06:35:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3559757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizzieboolizard/pseuds/lizzieboolizard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Since Odin's banishment of Thor, Asgard has fallen under the iron fist of Loki. Having witnessed Odin and Frigga both perish, Loki believed he would have everything he wanted. However, knowing Thor is out there causes him to realise he must bring him back to exact his revenge. But when Thor is dragged back to live under his brother's rule, a tempestuous relationship develops which may ultimately cause Loki's undoing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	He Of Many Must Rule Alone

_When humans tilt their faces just so, they see the blackened firmament that domes their limited vision. In day the firmament varies in colour, each diminution of the changing hues holding influence over the human soul._

_I know this because I have seen it. I was once dipped in its celestial sphere._

_From the dark it looked patterned and capricious, like the violent tornados of Jupiter. But when I was lowered calmly into its rondure I found all was icily quiet. I spent time floating on air like a dead angel, and I observed the rituals of the billion souls that were forced to hold their eyes fixated yonder._

_And I began to hurt. I began to taste. I suddenly wanted out of this still inferno._

_What lies it shed, obliterating the captive moppets made to **feel** like battery farmed sows. I observed and was overwrought. I peeled myself like cankered skin from the midst of their sticky vale. _

_For I observed that when the sky is blue, the human heart doth sing. It feels within itself searing joy and a triumph that can drug the naked mind. It is blue that makes the humans believe in God. The irony that you and I are gods felt satiric as I surveyed the bitter whisperings in their core._

_Even if the shadows linger, the strangely fragile human heart is almost impregnable under the touch of the coaxing sun._

_However, when grey falls again completely, the heart withers like a dying weed._

_Riddled with the cancer of desolate thought, the heart buckles under heavy keratin that sinks deep into the sinews of the flesh._

_Grey is a neutral colour, never falling within the guidelines of its more vibrant counterparts, yet to the humans it is as encumbering as a blade that nips a thick and vital tendon._

_Cruor bleeds out, startling and red, until skin is grey and languished as if poached in salted water. Lips turn blue and tingle with the need for a touch that can administer some life force. To allow blood back into the veins, saving the span of their latticed tide from the depression a grey sky strikes without touching._

_I still believe humans are weak to be so crippled by the empyrean that masques them. An acute blockage to their most rational part of reasoning, until the organ turns a squalid black and dies. Why is it that you love them so?_

_How is my organ then, now that you are gone? Am I to be human now, ever watching the sky for a sign of light that may warm the open question in my mouth?_

_I now rule all, and yet you have rendered me as frail as the temporals in your absence._

~

At the base of the imperial palace of Asgard, an armoured soldier gazed up at the sky. It was as crystalline as the most lucid of water, through which you could see the neighbouring planets and stars. The guard felt small and this humbled him. He was not a deep thinking man, only finding pleasure at the idiosyncrasies that governed his paltry existence. He felt no qualm at the residual dissonance that continued to simmer and erupt, knowing there was always a period of unceremonious adjustment. The ruler had been succeeded, and now there was another. That was all that concerned the verdant tendency within his budding mind. 

He shifted and his armour clinked against the wall, which was made of a thick set and gilded aurelian, so light to the touch that any metal it came into contact with sent a spiralling clangour up the rising ascents of the palace’s solid gold conduits. Under the looming moon, so clear you could see the craters which marred the mucilage of its elliptical surface, the king was somewhere sleeping. The soldier mused incoherently about the mind it must take to rule a nation. 

There was so much to consider, and it all must come before one’s own intimate needs. He considered his day and its routine, of rising in the evening, dressing himself and eating, taking a piss and standing, until the sun rose and his watch was assumed by another soldier who would guard amidst the light. 

It was all he need think about and it suited him well enough. But for a king, it was imperative to address all other minds beneath his rule. It must split the intellect apart, to be the head of an ever moving body, pulling its limbs in opposite directions whilst controlling with a sense of just dominion. The soldier began to ache at the thought, so he tried to shake it from his mind. Instead, he closed his eyes and lifted his face towards the stars, and began to hum tonelessly, wondering what he might have for breakfast.

Beside him, the soldier he shared the evening watch with cracked an eye and regarded him. Far superior in age and exposure, he was outraged to have been lumped with so silly and moon faced a boy. He watched the young soldier, the infuriating noise vibrating from his lips.

“Why are you doing that?”

The young soldier stopped and turned his eyes on his older counterpart.

“I don’t know.” He mulled it over, before reaching a complacent deduction. “I suppose humming is reason enough within itself.”

At this the other sighed despairingly. He shifted his weight, his veteran legs deadened in the cold, and followed the boy’s gaze towards the peak.

After a moment of silence, the young soldier spoke again. “I was thinking that royalty must out a gracious heart.”

At this the old guard began to laugh. A dry, hacking bark of strained hilarity. 

“A gracious heart! Oh, you boy!”

Settling back into silence, the old soldier ventured to speak once more. He was quieter this time, as if disturbed by an inconvenient truth. 

“You have lived a sheltered life, being tied to the continuation of the palace. You don’t how our society suffered, when forced to quell the instances of rebellion.”

“My father says he has little memory of it.”

The elderly soldier laughed again, this time hollowly. “Ah, how the Inheritor wields himself. Employ the young and stupid to guard your bed. Send the strong and senile to wreak your havoc.”

He leaned back against the gold, which rang again under the touch of his gussets of mail.

“Like many other young guards you were employed as such because you’d never left the palace walls. You’re all servants, attendants, domestic stewards. It was the older guards who were commanded to attack those who first renounced the new ruler. I suppose he deduced that they were the most persuaded to fight for unscrupulous royalty. Most ready to jump at an order, no matter which autocrat dictated it. Too convinced that death in the name of the king was death worth administering en masse.”

The old guard sighed deeply, and the seasoned map of his face grew dark with memory.

“We were asked to forget it once the people had seen the dead. But I remember. I remember the smell of burning flesh. The swords that were driven through their crying children before their small bodies were flung broken atop the wood piles.”

Revulsion and disbelief quickly patterned the young soldier’s face as the older guard continued.

“Their fingernails were lifted from their beds, the soft and bloody pulp beneath put out with sharpened pokers. Their genitals lopped off and stuffed into their mouths. They were hung from the city walls, as a warning to those who might think to take up their martyred ends. For weeks the kingdom reeked of their stench. They had grown swollen and fly ridden in the heat. It was only when the maggots began to hatch in their bloated remains that they were finally allowed to be taken down and buried.” 

The young guard almost laughed in his horror, such images crashing hard against his mind. 

“Absurd! Why smite those who love you? Why punish the ones whose lives are now yours?”

“Because nobody wanted him.” The old guard grimaced pityingly. “You did not see the palace walls, adorned in the bodies of his insurgents. He even had them dressed in herbs so those inside would not smell the travelling stench. What were you before you became a guard of the king?”   

“I was a servant. I tended to the fires in the palace and laid the tables when it was time for the royals to dine.”

“Then I’m sure you returned to your quarters, far from any life or experience of what the common people had to endure.”

The young soldier looked morose for a long time. Then he spoke. “I swore a sacred oath. I must believe that our new king is gracious in command.”

His eyes searched the weathered face of his companion, but only found him staring across the stars.  


The old guard then looked at him. 

A hint of sympathy and kindness crossed his eyes at seeing the boy so wretched. He leaned into him, caught his gaze and spoke directly.

“Men have given oaths for far less. All I know is that our erstwhile king had compassion. And in his place, he has unwittingly left a blackened despot and fierce oppressor. The time of wealth and free speech is over. Now we are one mind, filled with the sickness of tyranny and evil. And that mind would snap the strings of its dancing marionettes, and crush the hands and bodies of those who do his bidding.”

The young soldier began to shake. The older guard left him like that, his sympathy already stretched thin. 

“Some say the precedent king was murdered.”

That caught the older guard’s attention. He closed in on the boy, caught him by the scruff and slammed him into the palace wall, sending a gong up its shuddering, vibrating mass.

“You must never speak of that. If anyone but me might have heard you, death would seem a luxurious escape compared to what they would do.’

He released the boy, and turned away. He then spoke very quietly. “You are a fool, boy. A fool.”

The wind picked up once more, and left the two figures in the umbra of the closing dark.

~

A window sat open at the peak of the palace, where two guards stood arrested on either side of a pair of hardwood doors. If it weren’t for the imperceptible push of their chests against their breast plates they would have appeared as fraudulent statues, deeply pained with the demand for inhalation. 

The still expression in their eyes was evidence of their command to remain frozen. Even out of sight from a third party they did not dare blink for fear it would result in violent blindness. 

Behind them a dull and rhythmic grunt kept sounding, matched with a feminine squeal. It sounded as though something were being shunted through a small space, accompanied by the violent slap of perspiring flesh against flesh. 

~

Beyond the doors, a large fire leapt in its grate. An enormous bed sat in the centre of the room, where two figures clashed together frantically. 

Loki knelt behind the girl, his toned frame glistening with trails of copper sweat. His black tresses hung damp about his shoulders as his luminous eyes lay fixed upon the fire, its flames licking and coiling themselves as obscenely as the present act at hand. He focused himself, propelling violently against her slender body. She was a young thing, with red hair and milky limbs, and she lay before him like a stagnant charge, allowing him to take her whilst emitting perfunctory moans for his approval. 

He could feel the weight of amorous desire radiating through his every function, and yet it was ill-defined, as lax as water trickling loosely over rocks. His temper started to flare as he was unable to discharge the heavy burden. He began to grasp her pale flesh in his hands as he sped up his motion, thrusting into her so sharply she began to cry out with steady rhythm. Even with her splayed naked before him he was unable to drink her in. To have such a willing object at his disposal should have thrilled his inclination, and yet he could sense a loathsome effect clouding the reeling fetter of his mind. 

He began to bare his teeth and emit his frustration, the light of the fire burning shapes into his eyes. Then suddenly with a spitting hiss the red flames flickered to gold like a mess of hair. Loki stared at it just for a second, before with a strangled cry he crashed against the girl, sound ripping from the open tear of his mouth. He gasped as if his heart had been punctured, beads of sweat clinging loosely to his face. He slumped over her and grappled deeply for air. It took him several minutes before he was able to detach himself and slump back on the bed.

His rushing surrender left him winded and confused. He closed his eyes to steady his racing heartbeat, breathing evenly through his nose and mouth. After a long while he released a long sigh and was calm.

The red haired girl sat up dutifully and crawled towards him as the others were told to do. She reached him, planting kisses on his mouth, but he turned his head to show he wasn’t concerned. Annoyingly she was persistent and continued to croon against his lips. 

“Enough!” he lashed out and pushed her from the bed. She bounced like a rabbit startled from its warren and landed with a crash amidst the floor. 

Loki stood up and turned his back on her. He reached out and took his robe from the end of a chair before pulling it over the pearly sudoric of his skin. He was suddenly cold.

He could sense she still lay in a mess behind him. “Get out.” His words were icy with vexation. She stood up quickly and pulled on her dress, before running in a flash through the gilded doors. 

Loki moved over to his window and stood quietly. He gazed upon the universe and felt alone. This angered him. 

To be alone was what had given him his freedom. To be free from everything - free from family, free from duty, free from love. He had mastered the art of being alone and had forged it into a weapon. He had used it to smite his enemies, to gather his forces and at last, to rule - alone. 

It had been a year since the death of Odin, and some days longer since the banishment of Thor. Loki had observed the receding state of his adoptive father since he had discharged his favourite, _unparalleled only son_ \- and decided in that moment that there could be no room for love, for it was love that had destroyed the omnipotent ruler. He mused with revulsion the memory of Odin as he’d perished in his bed, his skin shrinking as his bones turned to dust inside the recesses of his bloated viscera. 

Loki’s final memory of Odin had been when it became too much. He’d paced with delirious anger, watching for months as his supposed father had dwindled without the presence of his crowning brother. At last he’d crept up to Odin’s chambers to observe the dry rasping of the wizened man. The sound of the rattling heave that expelled from his cankerous lips told Loki that Odin was near to death. He had leaned over him, so close that his electric eyes could imbue the porous sheathing of his skin. Then he had whispered, for the first time in his life:

“Why did you not leave me there to die?”

Whether Odin could have heard him or not seemed irrelevant - however, the old man quieted as if he might be listening. Loki continued, tracing his ghostly fingers over the shunting mass of the bridge of his father’s nose. To touch him would preserve his form in memory. He spoke again, his voice laced with the stoicism in his heart.

“You should have left me. There could be no love there. You knew this. Why did you give me to her?”

It was at that moment he thought of Frigga, his mother. She had reverted to a ghost, gliding half there through the shadows of her grief, as if his presence gave no comfort to her illusion. 

“ _I_ was the illusion,” Loki hushed in his father’s ear, “I was the cancerous tumour that sucked at her breast with all the pain of a lacerating tempest. She could not force the milk from her bosom any more than she could force a love she had no obligation to possess. _You should have left me there to die!”_

Then he had thought of Thor. A mere droplet in an ocean tide of memory - a shard of glass from the mirror that had been shattered. The way Thor crashed around his head space was painful like a wound being rubbed by a vacillating surf. He had loved Thor and had found solace in him throughout all their years as brothers. That was what made him hate the most. It was Thor, the fool, who had rendered him at his weakest. 

Furious at the idea, Loki had then closed his hand over Odin’s nose and mouth. He had pinched tight. Even in his frailty Odin had shook like an oscillating leaf, trembling against the incoming breaker of death. As the life was slowly snuffed out of him he had opened his eyes and looked up at Loki through the glistening brooks of his aged silver storm. 

Returning the horror captured in Odin’s gaze, Loki’s memory had then turned to his vision of torment - when he had witnessed Thor disappear through the lightning waves of the Bifröst. It had caused tears to spill keenly from his eyes as he had stood over Odin and wept for all the things he could not change. He wept for this act that was the most irrefutable of all.

After a few moments the hot blast of struggling air that had turned to cold sweat in Loki’s palm ceased to be. He had removed his hand and looked down at the still face of his father. He seemed peaceful in death. Loki had mourned him then, falling to his knees. Since he left his side to tell the guards of his ‘death in slumber’ he had not wept at all.

Frigga died soon after, unable to take the heartache of losing her family. Loki knew he was not enough to sustain her. He had loved her but he did not mourn her. He found he could not do it in the end. 

Then the black days came. Inches from victory, they had risen up against him, and he had brought the spear crashing down with all the lightning squalls of Niflheim. He had hacked their love apart - punished their disinterest, sliced the skin from their screeching cries for leniency. They had begged for Thor, entreated for Odin, and he had them weep blood for all their steadfast years of loyalty. 

And now it was so. He stood as king, almighty ruler of the herd. He had silenced the rebellion, built a dynasty based on fear. So why was he not satisfied in his heart?

Now staring out across the stars, Loki whispered his insatiable dilemma. 

“Thor.”

It was not enough to render helpless those who hated him. It had been too easy. He did not need their love, and found their terror no longer savoury to his taste. 

As he turned back to the crackling roar of the flames that danced inside their hearth he was reminded again of the light. The way the red blended into gold taunted him and cautioned him of this folly. But it was enough to let him know that it would not dwindle.

He had to find his brother. Wherever he was, wherever his banishment had placed him, he would bring him kicking and screaming back to the halls he had once called home. He would wipe the playful smile from his lips and put out the waltzing humour in his eyes. He would strip him of his inner self and lay waste to the paradise of his soul.

Odin and Frigga were dead but they took serious the subject of family. They had died the way Loki had wanted them to - both punished into ruin for their neglect. If they had loved him at all, they might have lived. 

Thor, however, endured - he still laughed, he still loved, he still played. As long as he existed and the memory of his countenance continued to dampen Loki’s creation, the king of Asgard could not rest. At least not with a sated glow. 

He had to bring him back and end him in all the ways he had pictured for years. He would send guards out through the fastened iron of the Bifröst and then smile as they returned the clown to him. 

Finally restful, Loki slid off his robe and slipped naked into the warmth of his bedsheets. He slept well that night, knowing that morning might bring the colour of revenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first attempt at a Loki/Thor fic. Thanks so much for reading! xx


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